Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
PA
Nicole (my wife) and I are back in Pennsylvania, for our baby shower and later this week, my sister-in-laws wedding. Stay tuned for more shenanigans as they develop.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
(Writing about) Science is Hard.
I'm up really late tonight, trying to finish two manuscripts for scientific papers. I really like doing science, and I like seeing the lines on my CV(1) stack up, but I always find writing papers very frustrating for three simple reasons. First, it brings into tight focus all the stuff I've glossed over or half understood, sort of like watching a karaoke video where you sing a song of ignorance, and you end up mortified by your inelegant performance. Second, the act itself is sometimes unpleasant, as it becomes an seemingly unending cycle of correcting your own tiny mistakes. Third, it always brings out a streak of whining in me, which is not so impressive in a grown man.
OK. Back to work.
(1) Curriculum vitae, a nerdy and long version of a resume.
OK. Back to work.
(1) Curriculum vitae, a nerdy and long version of a resume.
Friday, April 4, 2008
WTF, Ed?
One recent poster of a comment on the blog asked cordially, "WTF Ed?" For those of you who are not hip to the lingo those wacky kids are using on the interwebs, "WTF" stands for a more obscene version of "What the Heck?" I wanted to take a few moments and answer that more fully. The question is effectively, I think, "Why are you going to the Middle East to teach at an American University? From were comes this career path?"
To answer this, I think I need to lay out exactly what I hoped to accomplish a few months ago when I began my job search. I had been a post-doc for several years with one of the top research groups worldwide in the field of computational quantum chemistry. (Note: This is not meant as a boast. Any meaningful list of the top groups in this field would include my post-doctoral research adviser's group.) I loved this position, and in fact consider joining this group one of the single best decisions I've made career-wise, but I was ready to move on to a position with more responsibility, in an environment where I was the principle investigator. I thus wanted to do science in an academic environment that encourages both research and teaching, and my job search was tailored to finding such a position.
I sent out ~150 applications, which lead to quite a few interviews, which lead to a few offers. In evaluating the offers, I looked at three simple things:
A) Is the teaching load such that I could excel at instruction while still maintaining some scholarship? For example, if the school had a teaching load of four classes plus three labs per semester (and this is not an exaggeration, I've actually seen this) this would effectively end any hope of doing research, and potentially be heavy enough that one would not "excel" at teaching so much as "endure." As my father once said, "Hating your job makes for an awfully long life."
B) Did the school have the infrastructure in place to do computational research, or at least have research support such that work in my field could be done? For example, if the school had no mechanism in place to allow me to have a reasonable desktop for debugging and simple tests, e.g. I would only be allowed to use Windows Vista with a machine whose specifications over which I had no input, then this would present an insurmountable barrier to scholarship. This is not to say I was demanding a $30K Mac desktop (which will do nearly as much as a $4K ibuypower w/ Linux box) , but rather I needed some assurance that the route to future research was not already closed by insufficient resources/IT standards.
C) How was the salary? I'm embarrassed to admit it came into my calculations, but crass and commercial as it is, consider: I am 32 years old, I have a wife, I have a kid (more specifically, a son) on the way, I have a PhD in a hard science from a school ranked in the top 20 in that science with 4 years post-doctoral experience, and I make approximately 1/2 what the manager at a chain store/restaurant makes. (No, seriously.) Money was not a deciding factor, but the idea of making sure I caught up for all the saving I did not do in my twenties, while all my peers where buying houses, has gotten more important as fatherhood looms.
Against this criteria, the position in Doha was an obvious, perhaps even easy, choice. The teaching load is reasonable, especially given that from my one experience teaching a class at the University in Doha as part of my interview the students are significantly more aggressive than American students, and thus they really seem to want to learn, which makes instruction a lot more enjoyable. The research support was, and there is no other word for it, exemplary! And the salary was right. I will be able to excel at teaching, get a lot of really novel science done, and make a decent living for my family, all in Doha, Qatar.
This is "WTF" I will be doing in the Middle East.
To answer this, I think I need to lay out exactly what I hoped to accomplish a few months ago when I began my job search. I had been a post-doc for several years with one of the top research groups worldwide in the field of computational quantum chemistry. (Note: This is not meant as a boast. Any meaningful list of the top groups in this field would include my post-doctoral research adviser's group.) I loved this position, and in fact consider joining this group one of the single best decisions I've made career-wise, but I was ready to move on to a position with more responsibility, in an environment where I was the principle investigator. I thus wanted to do science in an academic environment that encourages both research and teaching, and my job search was tailored to finding such a position.
I sent out ~150 applications, which lead to quite a few interviews, which lead to a few offers. In evaluating the offers, I looked at three simple things:
A) Is the teaching load such that I could excel at instruction while still maintaining some scholarship? For example, if the school had a teaching load of four classes plus three labs per semester (and this is not an exaggeration, I've actually seen this) this would effectively end any hope of doing research, and potentially be heavy enough that one would not "excel" at teaching so much as "endure." As my father once said, "Hating your job makes for an awfully long life."
B) Did the school have the infrastructure in place to do computational research, or at least have research support such that work in my field could be done? For example, if the school had no mechanism in place to allow me to have a reasonable desktop for debugging and simple tests, e.g. I would only be allowed to use Windows Vista with a machine whose specifications over which I had no input, then this would present an insurmountable barrier to scholarship. This is not to say I was demanding a $30K Mac desktop (which will do nearly as much as a $4K ibuypower w/ Linux box) , but rather I needed some assurance that the route to future research was not already closed by insufficient resources/IT standards.
C) How was the salary? I'm embarrassed to admit it came into my calculations, but crass and commercial as it is, consider: I am 32 years old, I have a wife, I have a kid (more specifically, a son) on the way, I have a PhD in a hard science from a school ranked in the top 20 in that science with 4 years post-doctoral experience, and I make approximately 1/2 what the manager at a chain store/restaurant makes. (No, seriously.) Money was not a deciding factor, but the idea of making sure I caught up for all the saving I did not do in my twenties, while all my peers where buying houses, has gotten more important as fatherhood looms.
Against this criteria, the position in Doha was an obvious, perhaps even easy, choice. The teaching load is reasonable, especially given that from my one experience teaching a class at the University in Doha as part of my interview the students are significantly more aggressive than American students, and thus they really seem to want to learn, which makes instruction a lot more enjoyable. The research support was, and there is no other word for it, exemplary! And the salary was right. I will be able to excel at teaching, get a lot of really novel science done, and make a decent living for my family, all in Doha, Qatar.
This is "WTF" I will be doing in the Middle East.
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